


Commonplace Rare

by LadyNorbert



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types
Genre: Adopted Children, Baby Dwarves, Dwarves In Exile, Family, Gen, Prequel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-11
Updated: 2018-04-11
Packaged: 2019-04-21 15:52:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,987
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14288298
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyNorbert/pseuds/LadyNorbert
Summary: Before the events of Dragon Age: Origins, Bodahn Feddic finds a small dwarf boy in the Deep Roads and brings him home.





	Commonplace Rare

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ItsAlwaysBloodMagic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ItsAlwaysBloodMagic/gifts).



> This story would not have been possible without the Dragon Age Wikia, so thank you to those who contributed to the pages for Bodahn and Sandal!
> 
> Neither Bodahn's wife nor the noblewoman who gets him into trouble are ever named in DA canon, so to select names for them I consulted the Dragon Age Dwarf Name Generator at fantasynamegenerators.com.
> 
> Many thanks to AntivanCrafts for serving as beta reader!

* * *

_Part I: Sandal_

* * *

 

Shiny. That was the first thing he could remember; out of the darkness there was something shiny.

He was very small, then, and the darkness was very large. But the wall before him was shiny and sparkling, even in the darkness. The glow of deep mushrooms and ancient light sources caught the gemstones embedded in the wall and made them twinkle; they invited him forward, beckoned him to touch, dazzled his eyes.

The stories, of course, he didn't understand. He liked the pictures, though. There were heroic dwarves standing on piles of gold, and kingly dwarves wearing crowns. There were tall slender creatures with pointed ears, too, and mighty beasts with wings outstretched. Each image was rendered carefully in gold and jewels, an abandoned work of art from a time Before.

Before what, exactly, he didn't know. He still doesn't. He just remembers that the pictures were from Before. Were he other than he was, he might think he only dreamed the dazzling pictures; but dwarves did not dream, not even him.

 

* * *

 

There were monsters in the dark.

He was not afraid.

He walked along the bejeweled wall, thick fingertips trailing over the strangely comforting edges and swells of stone and treasure, until he reached the end. The darkness hovered there, and in the spaces beyond it he could hear them. They howled their mad song, feverishly searching, endlessly hunting. He could feel them more than he could see them, faint shapes that moved and shifted, like a pond of black water with ink spilled in the middle. Sometimes they came too close, mouths opening to reveal sharp teeth like cracked and jagged rocks, and they smelled of death and decay.

Once, they came too close. The small dwarf near the edge of the darkness was a temptation, and he saw the hunger in the black eyes as they drank in his form. Then it went very still, and lay on the ground, and did not get up again.

The monsters stayed away after that.

 

* * *

 

Time held no meaning; the days passed into one another without much notice on his part. But as he sat studying the images, watching how the delicate facets of the jewels winked at each other in the semidarkness, he saw the mosaic grow brighter and brighter in the glow of approaching lanterns.

There were four of them - treasure hunters, scavengers of lost luxuries. Three of them had black marks inked on their faces. Two stood with weapons raised, ready to defend, and the third turned his attention to his beautiful wall, the wall that had kept him company. But the fourth was twinkly-eyed and had braids in his beard, and he froze when he caught sight of the misplaced child.

"Hello there," he said, crouching down so they were face to face.

"Hello."

"Are you all right? You hungry?" He opened a pouch on his belt and took out a piece of bread. "Here you go, eat that."

"How d'you suppose he got here?" called one of the others, taking notice of the interaction for the first time.

"I can't imagine it. We're too far out from any of the usual stopping points." The friendly stranger turned back to him, watching as he finished the bread. "What are you doing here, my boy?"

He swallowed, and paused. "They're coming."

"They're coming?" repeated the man called Bodahn. "Who is coming? Men, he says someone's coming."

The man who did not have a weapon had taken out tools and was starting to pry jewels loose from the wall of stories, but he paused. "Do you hear something?"

They all listened. He waited patiently. He knew the sound.

"Great Ancestors!" cried the third man. "Darkspawn!"

"Let's get out of here!"

"Back to Orzammar, let's go!"

The one called Bodahn looked at him in terror. "All right, my boy, everything's going to be just fine. You come with me, yes?" He picked up the child and, with his companions, fled the tunnel.

 

* * *

_Part II: Bodahn_

* * *

 

Bodahn didn't know what to do with the boy.

He must have come from Orzammar; from where else could a dwarven child wander into the Deep Roads? Kal-Sharok was unlikely at best. But no one knew anything about a missing lad. No one seemed to have any idea from whence he might have come. They looked at his pale face, at the vacant expression in his lyrium-colored eyes, and shook their heads. Even in the Shaperate, there was no record which could match him.

The child had no past. But Bodahn could give him a future.

He took the boy home to Coravia, his wife, who shook her head and chuckled. "I could not give you a son," she said, "so instead you give one to me?"

"Well, I admit this isn't what I was hoping to find in the Deep Roads," Bodahn replied with a chuckle of his own. "That casteless fellow took me beyond even the old Aeducan Thaig. You should have seen the wall of riches! But we had no time to take anything before the darkspawn came; it was all I could to grab the boy. No telling how long he was down there before we found him."

Coravia shook her head again. "He needs feeding. What's his name?"

"Hasn't got one, far as I can tell."

"Well, we have to call him something."

Why she chose Sandal for the boy, Bodahn didn't know. It fit him well enough; the child quickly learned that the word meant him. He spent his days at Coravia's skirts, clutching the hem of her apron in one hand, breathing the fragrances of cinnamon and fresh linen as she made pies and washed bedding. Coravia hummed as she worked; she patched the elbows of Sandal's shirts and taught him new words and worked a comb through his curls, and they called him their son.

Bodahn was a merchant. He owned a shop called Feddic Trades, where he sold the things he found, or the things that were found by the people he hired. The shop had been his father's, and his father had traded in the more commonplace wares of textiles and household items, but Bodahn had the soul of a treasure hunter. He grew up devouring legends of Paragons and the ancient dwarven empire that spanned all of Thedas, and he wanted to save any of that which he could. So he sent hirelings, again and again, into the darkest corners of the Deep Roads in hopes of finding ancient valuables and clues to their lost history.

Usually they came back with things that were less exciting - discarded armor, the occasional piece of dinnerware, a chest which had already been looted by previous explorers. But whatever they brought, Bodahn took, and sold in his stall in the Orzammar Commons. He drew on his memories of the old tales, and spun his own legends to attach to everything he sold, and at the close of day he went home and told the same stories to Sandal.

 

* * *

_Part III: Sandal_

* * *

 

As far as they could guess, Sandal was about five years old when Bodahn found him. For the next five years, the Feddic family was happy and comfortable.

Sandal liked Bodahn, and he liked Coravia, and he didn't like that they were in trouble.

He was at the shop when the woman came. She looked soft but spoke hard, and her eyes darted over Bodahn's wares. Then she stopped, and Sandal watched as her face turned funny colors, and she turned and stormed out of the Commons as fast as she could walk.

"Now what was that all about?" Bodahn wondered. Sandal didn't reply.

He was still there when the woman came back, and this time she had men with her. They wore shirts of metal and expressions of stone, and did not smile when Sandal said hello. The woman in the soft dress picked up the leather arm guards on a table.

"These were custom designed for my brother," she said. "Here, right here - the symbol of our house! What have you to say for yourself, thief?"

Bodahn looked at her, and she looked at him, and something drifted between them in the air, something silent and strange and scary. And then the men in the metal shirts took Bodahn away, and Coravia came running to fetch Sandal back home.

The next day, Coravia took him to see Bodahn in the place with the locked doors. "I didn't steal those bracers," he told her. "They were in the latest cache brough in from the Deep Roads, or so I was told."

"I told you to stop hiring casteless!" she hissed. "They'll take anything they can get their hands on, they must have robbed that noblewoman's brother and left him for dead or something and then gave you the bracers. Now what?"

"My trial's in three days, but it doesn't look good." Bodahn swallowed. "That Gorim fellow - the one who serves as second to the middle prince - he told me Lady Vodra's probably going to have me executed."

"By the Ancestors, what are we going to do?"

"Gorim's an honorable sort. He offered to ask his master to intervene on my behalf but I don't think it's a good idea. So..." He lowered his voice. "Take the boy home and get our things together. Anybody asks, you're ashamed of me and you're exiling yourself to the surface."

"I'm _what_?!"

"Shhh! Listen to me, Cory. I need you to do exactly what I tell you. Close up the shop - anything hasn't been ransacked, take over to Janar. He'll give you a good price for it. Pack our things and come back to say goodbye. Gorim's going to arrange for some guards to be on duty tomorrow who can be bought... don't know what it'll cost, but never mind, I'll make it up somehow. Just leave some of the gold with me and take the rest. Once you're topside, look for the caravan for Denerim. I'll catch up to you as soon as I can."

"Enchantment?" Sandal asked. He held out his hand and gave Bodahn a stone.

"What's this? A rune?" Bodahn and Coravia looked at one another. "Sandal, where did you find this?"

Sandal shook his head. "Enchantment."

"I think he made it, Bodahn," said Coravia, and she sounded as though she forgot to be angry for a few minutes. "Where in the world would he have learned to do that?"

"I think our boy is full of surprises, Cory. Isn't that right, Sandal?"

"Enchantment!"

"Exactly. Go on then, both of you; there's a lot to be done and not much time to do it. Lady Vodra's reach is considerable, but even she can't get to us on the surface. We'll make do." He reached through the bars of his metal room and patted Sandal's head.

Coravia took Sandal away again, and he carried things out of Bodahn's store and across the Commons to where a red-haired girl with pigtails was reading a book outside of her father's shop, and he waited with her while Coravia went inside and sold things. They went home, and Sandal watched Coravia fold clothing and fill little bags with shiny coins and put things into boxes, and she sent for someone with a cart to help her prepare to leave Orzammar.

She was afraid of going to the surface. Afraid of falling into the sky, afraid of not finding Bodahn again, afraid of becoming someone else without the stone over her head.

And Bodahn was afraid too. Sandal could see it when they went to visit him in the locked rooms again. He was afraid to be alone, afraid of dying, afraid of losing them.

He didn't understand. But he didn't want them to be afraid.

They would find each other again. They would see. There was nothing to fear. Someday they would see.

 


End file.
